Reasoning support for Semantic Web ontology family languages using Alloy

Semantic Web (SW), commonly regarded as the next generation of the Web, is an emerging vision of the new Web from the Knowledge Representation and the Web communities. To realize this vision, a series of techniques has been proposed. Semantic Web Ontology Langauge (OWL) and its extension Semantic Web rule Language (SWRL) and Semantic Web Logic Language (SWRL-FOL) are some of the most important outputs from the SW activities. However the existing reasoning and consistency checking tools for those languages are primitive. This paper proposes using the existing formal modelling tool, in particular Alloy, to provide an automatic reasoning service for the Semantic Web ontology family languages (OWL/SWRL/SWRL-FOL). 1 keywords: Semantic Web, Alloy, OWL, SWRL, FOL. 1Primary contact: Hai H. Wang, School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, M13 9JPL, United Kingdom Email: [email protected] Telephone: +44 161 275 0686 Fax: +44 161 275 6204